My heart starts with John Edwards and he's gotten a horrific, shameful deal from the news media, but somehow his message, while justified and righteous, does not appear to have the broad appeal necessary to win his Party's nomination. He gets mischaracterized as "angry" but there's enough of it there to hurt him -- we don't tend to elect on anger so much as opposition, and there's a line there.
In many appearances I find Hillary Clinton to be smart, competent, and well within the bounds of my beliefs. In a certain sense she's due, and in another it'll be a sad day if she does lose for women and especially young girls across America, because another likely female Presidential candidate does not appear -- to me -- to be on the near horizon.
However, she's got a big problem, and it's the very thing that should be a strength. The problem is Bill.
If I'm feeling any of the so-called Clinton fatigue, it's not really her so much as her husband. I'm just so over Bill, my favorite President since JFK. When I see him going after a reporter by quite politically characterizing the questioner's beliefs here, I'm just over him. Not enough to vote for any Republican over his wife in the General Election, but enough to want an alternative now, as seems to be a growing case with the Democratic Electorate. Why else all these high profile endorsements for this other guy?
The saving grace of this election cycle is that the alternative is here. Barack Obama is getting slimed nice, just like a frontrunner or a threat to the status quo.
In the Washington Post there's columnist Richard Cohen with a vile anti-Semetic smear based on guilt by association-to-association, whereas Obama has evinced a firm and principled support of Israel.
The Edwards campaign, hopefully just a wildcatter in there, got a falsified version of Obama's quote concerning Ronald Reagan on CBS News, making it seem like Obama supported Reagan's policies when he's actually, to paraphrase Kos blogger Fonsia, "come to bury Reagan, not to praise him."
Chris Bowers has an excellent explanation of how he's come to prefer Obama over Clinton vis-à-vis ending the Iraq War, well worth reading.
But if you really need to be convinced, if you want to spend some quality time, like you may not get again this election, with a very, very smart, able, interesting, amiable, refreshing and oh-so-clearly prepared candidate...
...if you finally want to close the deal with yourself...
...click here.
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